Enshittification and Airbnb

Cory Doctorow isn’t someone I read a lot but he coined the term Enshittification in this post. Enshittification is the evolution of platforms:

“Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.”

For me Airbnb has been the perfect demonstration of this. I had never used Airbnb until recently, although I owned their stock. Having used the service now three times I have sold the stock and will never use it again. Airbnb needs and deserves to die.

All three of my experiences took place in Lisbon. In the first experience the flat sprang a leak resulting in flooding. It completely destroyed the bedroom and caused us to evacuate at 3am. Luckily we were able to check into a hotel. With only a couple of days to go we decided to enjoy the remainder of a wonderful trip and deal with Airbnb when we got back.

The second experience involved a Airbnb landlord out lying about the location of the villa. Described as close the airport it turned out to be an hour away. In farm country. With nothing there.

The third experience was to replace this villa. In this case the unit wasn’t suitable to sleep the number of people due to a complex of connecting rooms. Often what is advertised is not what you get it seems. The icing on the cake was the unit above started leaking into this unit as well. Not as severe to require evacuating, but still concerning.

In all three cases Airbnb did nothing to rectify the situation. They prefer to push you to work it out with the owner. Ultimately you have no real recourse.

I’ve chatted with others who have more experience using the platform and they have said things have gotten worse. It’s not just me but the Enshittification of the platform.

Airbnb needs to Die

Lisbon is known to have a distorted housing market. When I chatted to the person who let us into the last Airbnb she let me know that they had 60! Multiply that by hundreds, maybe thousands of owners and you get a housing market that has completely pivoted to rent seeking. Locals are very much priced out due to wealthy national and foreign investors.

Many cities are beginning to fight back as describe here. This is needed. Not only can governments step in and stop this, but younger generations need to stop using Airbnb. These younger generations can’t afford to own but they tend use Airbnb a lot when traveling. By doing so they are only pricing themselves out.